Synopsis

Shurannosuke Sakaki is a masterless samurai with a razor-sharp katana and a cold-hearted personality. Whenever you see the mark of two crossed scythes on his back, death is sure to follow. Because of his exceptional swordsmanship, Shurannosuke is hired by the Nakura Clan to rescue Princess Mayu from the Seki Ninja. In this mission, he must use his full potential to survive the Seki Ninja's notorious henchmen.

Sword for Truth was widely considered by otaku during the 1990s to be one of the worst anime of all time! The infamy has died down and now it is simply unknown. It was released in the US under the title: Ninja Scroll 2. This is despite the fact that it was made before Ninja Scroll and has absolutely nothing to do with Ninja Scroll. A far more appropriate title would be: WHAT!? It is very appropriate that this was made during the 1990s, because you are going to say WHAT!? when viewing this pile of shit more often than Stone Cold Steve
Austin!

Story: 1/10

This is quite easily the least coherent story in the history of anime. Not because it is trying to be artsy and is using layers on layers of symbolism. No, it is due to nonsensical scene cuts, plot points that are brought up once and completely abandoned, and the COMPLETE INEPTITUDE of the writer. A princess is captured and a powerful samurai is hired to get her back. The story starts out quite simple. However, the movie will cut away during a fight to introduce some random character that will never be seen or heard from again. One of the main bad guys is fighting the main character when random lesbian ninjas show up for no reason with zero explanation and fight the baddie while our hero wanders off. It never shows how the fight even finished between the baddie and the lezzies and fucking of course it never mentions any of them again! After capturing the princess, the bad guys try to use a hot hooker chick to make the princess fall in love with her and steal her family sword, which they were already demanding as ransom. This was the entire point of capturing the princess. So the bad guys went with 1 plan and then started a second plan that would only work if they hadn't already gone with the first plan??! WHAT!? This is just an excuse for a hot girl on girl sex scene, that is generally considered to be the "highlight" of this fucking movie! The hero saves the princess, but while rowing a boat is randomly attacked by a sea monster with no explanation. However, the hero slashes the monster with his sword and it explodes....WHAT!? After returning the princess to her father, the father decides that the Samurai touched the princess and should be killed, but then changes his mind at the last second and offers a reward, which the samurai refuses because, "you can't kick dog and then give him a treat". The samurai then crosses paths with a character that it randomly cut to several times and is supposedly an assassin, but they don't fight. They just say that they both reek of blood and the movie ends. This movie reeks of BULLSHIT!

characters: 1/10

Not a single character in this film has any level of character development. I can barely describe the characters using trope names because they don't even have that much development. The bad guys have unestablished motives for why they want the sword. They are just bad guys. The hero isn't cool, isn't badass, has no interesting traits. The princess is apparently bicurious, but that is the entire extent of her character. She just has sex with every man and woman she comes across. huh huh... hey Beavis, I said comes! 90s moment, couldn't help it!

Art: 1/10

Unlike Ninja Scroll, Sword for Truth actually has quite terrible art. This makes it fairly insulting to call it a sequel to Ninja Scroll, which was stupid as hell but at least it was well animated, coherent, and most of all fucking fun!

Entertainment: 1/10

It actually hurts to watch this piece of shit. I only recommend watching this one with pain killers at the ready!

Overall: 1/10

Dear sweet GOD this movie was bad! The only reason anyone ever rented this during the 1990s was because the false title Ninja Scroll 2. It takes a special kind of bad to be both physically painful and absolutely rage inducing. This is one of those anime!

Cheap ass version of Ninja Scroll. That's all I could think of as I watched this and thought about the trailer I seen for this. How dare they compare this to NInja Scroll. Dub was boring and poorly cast, story is familiar at best, action and violence is cheap and generic. Don't let the trailer fool you. However, If your a fan of cheesy dubs and the horribly over-acted OVAs, this one's for you. Weak blood sprays and cheap character design really make for a low-budget looking title. Yet, as a fan of these types, I have this dvd in my collection. It's right there
with Riding Bean, Vampire Wars and M.D Geist and can easily be rewatched due to it's short runtime. If you don't expect too much, you won't be disappointed.

Contrary to animegorey's review, I actually found this to be better than Ninja Scroll but not so much because of the quality but because it's less fantasy and therefore comes much closer to the appeal of such shows as Fist of the North Star.

The biggest disappointment is that the ending disappoints when it could have been easily continued. Certainly the protagonists while not necessarily being special aren't very annoying compared to most other samurai films.

Not annoying might be underselling the characters though. The professional assassin feel of the characters carry this movie. That is, while normally the lack of character development is a detriment
...maybe because it's rare for an anime to have a combination of Golgo 13 + Lone Wolf and Cub and a more silent bad ass Rurouni Kenshin's Sato meet up with a gaijin-like hand to hand grappler who just defeated a fat but seemingly veteran like Samurai but there's almost a Zen-like atmosphere to the whole movie.

Like a Zen koan though, length is one of the best and worst features of this movie.

You just don't know if the ending was intentionally there to spread a type of thought provoking message or it's merely there because the movie had no direction.

Nonetheless, in the right mood, this mediocre anime can seemingly be worth a peek and may rise as much as an 8 if you can see past through this as an adventure anime featuring a samurai and more like a Golgo 13-like side event where the events don't really hold much storytelling substance but amid the confusing scenes in the end "it's all part of the character's existence".

Well, let me start off by saying that even though I went into this with really low expectations, this wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. There's some pretty decent moments here & there, but for the most part, it's still just kind of poorly made.

First off, the writing is terrible and sounds like something I would have came up with if I was 13, and was into nothing but pointless violence and pointless sex. That's all that happens in this movie. There's a very generic story that they have in there as well, but it ends up being less of a
full story, with scenes jumping between each other, not flowing very nicely or having any kind of a good transition between them. The whole thing is presented sloppily, and it's really more of an excuse to have a bunch of blood, gore, and naked ladies.

Also, I should mention that the pacing is completely fucked. This movie is 49 minutes long, and if I had to guess, about 35 of those minutes are dedicated to dialogue and exposition. 5 minutes are dedicated to sex scenes, and the remaining 9 minutes are dedicated to action. The main villains that they introduce are usually killed off within the first 30 seconds of their introduction, thus giving the viewer very little time to even process what's going on, yet the movie just continues.

The characters are really not good at all. The main character, Shuranosuke is virtually unbeatable and therefore, all of the fights end up becoming super boring to watch about halfway through, since it's just him wrecking house the whole time. The other characters are very generic or one-dimensional... and everybody's dialogue is written rather poorly.

The quality of the animation ranges between "Good for a 1990 TV series", and "Wow, that was really embarrassingly poor". The art style leaves a bit to be desired, but it's fine, for the most part. Thing move pretty good, for the most part, too... however, there are a few parts where the animation just looks really stiff and unrealistic. The art is passable, though, and is probably the most well-accomplished part of the whole thing.

Audio is pretty decent. The sound mix is dated, even for the time, and it just feels cheesy and doesn't work very well. I watched it in Japanese, and the voice acting was decent, but nothing spectacular. The soundtrack was also pretty middling.

Overall, Sword for Truth is pretty bad, but there also ends up being some pretty silly moments in it, and some decent art that makes it somewhat bearable. Still, I wouldn't recommend this cheap Ninja Scroll knockoff to anybody with half a brain.